Flexible containers having a flexible front sheet sealed along a perimeter to a flexible rear sheet are generally discussed herein with particular discussions to flexible containers having a container port affixed in between the front sheet and rear sheet comprising a pliable attachment flange.
Flexible containers are widely used for packaging nutritional fluids, diluents, medicaments, IV solutions, and the like. Broadly speaking, these flexible containers are manufactured by affixing a first flexible sheet to a second flexible sheet along a perimeter and interposing one or more ports in between the two sheets for filling, for draining, and/or for supplementing or adding other fluids to the container. The sheets used to make the flexible containers may be made from single-layer flexible thermoplastic sheets or from multiple-layers flexible thermoplastic sheets. The one or more ports generally include a set port for access with the spike of a fluid administration set or an additive port for use with a needle. The flexible container may include peelable seals to form a multi-compartment containers.
A common characteristic among the prior art ports used with the prior art flexible containers is ports having a solid or non-pliable attachment flange with a contoured configuration. To heat seal these prior art attachment flanges to the front and rear sheets to thereby form the prior art flexible containers, contoured heat dies with matching contour configuration as the attachment flanges are used. The contoured heat dies heat and fuse the attachment flanges to the sheets to form flexible containers. Occasionally misalignment between the contoured heat dies and the contoured attachment flanges will occur thus resulting in inaccurate heat sealing of the ports to the sheets. As readily apparent, inaccurate heat seals will result in reject containers. In addition, by necessarily aligning the heat dies with the attachment flanges, production is negatively impacted due to the alignment requirement.
Accordingly, there is a need for a container comprising an easy to install port not highly dependent on alignment requirements.